Another request for help

Having seen the abilities of the team of crack fact(oid)checkers here, I can’t resist the temptation to ask for more help. I’m planning on writing something on higher education. My starting point is the belief that the squeeze on universities, driven in part by the desire to force them to rely more on full-fee paying domestic students, has resulted in very little growth in domestic undergraduate numbers over the decade since the government was elected. But I’m having trouble getting consistent time-series on this. This report called Selected Higher Education Research Expenditure Statistics: 2000 supports my view for the period up to 2000, but after that, looking at the DEST site, I can only find annual cross-sections that don’t seem to be collected on a consistent basis. Can anyone give me consistent time series on domestic undergraduate numbers, and commencements. Better still is there a breakdown giving the number of HECS places and the number of full-fee places supported by FEE-HELP, on a basis comparable to the statistics up to 2000?

The number of subsidised places in 2007 will be roughly the same as they were in 1997. In terms of student access to HECS places a decade of Howard Government education reforms has amounted to standing still.

A net increase in subsidised student places by at least 1775 EFTSU over 2002-8. This is amounts to a miniscle 0.47% growth in subsidised places.
From 2004-7 NUS’s prognosis is that from 2004 -7 BAF’s impact will be to reduce the HECS places available as universities reduce their load to avoid over-enrolment penalties. (see below). Only in 2008 does the package produce some growth.
The number of subsidised places in 2007 will be roughly the same as they were in 1997. In terms of student access to HECS places a decade of Howard Government education reforms has amounted to standing still.

Ministerial discretion over the allocation of replacement places in the phasing out of marginal funding.

PHASING OUT OF MARGINAL OVER-ENROLMENTS OUTCOME
The 32,232 marginally funded places (2002) will be partially replaced with 24,883 fully funded places phased in over 2005 to 2008
From 2008 universities will receive no funding for over-enrolments.

From 2006 universities that over-enrol more by than 5% of their target load will be financially penalised (due to pipeline effects some universities have reduced their load in 2004)

It’s true education and training policy under this goverment has been chronically bad (and I believe the repercussions will be with us for a long time for that), but perhaps you ought to mention that the 18-25 population peaked in 1991 before noting that the number of funded places has not increased in the last decade.

Having quickly gathered the data from the ABS (http://tinyurl.com/mambp), I see I was close but no cigar. The trouble with lodging little factoids in memory is that they either they or your memory keeps changing.

The number of 18-25yos peaked in 1991-1992, fell again, but has staged a recovery in the 21st century so it’s now almost exactly the same as in 1992 (I wonder if DEST has noticed this recovery, BTW?). I’ll email the spreadsheet.

John http://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/content.asp?page=/publications/stats/fexp.htm has some of what you need
It is difficult to compare funding levels in detail because the funding system changed – particularly research students were separated into the RTS about 2000 when before they were simply part of teh main funding pool
The UA data goes to 2005 since they have not updated it since I left. If you want me to help explain more of it email me and we can then talk.

I do think your argument gets things the wrong way round – the Govt defined the places it would fund so uni supply hovers around that number; fee paying is largely irrelevant for undergraduate but to a very modest degree took up some of the slack. Nelson did push up the formal number funded which mostly took out the previous level of over supplied places – paying for them so an improvement for the unis.
How much demand? Well the application figures are fairly flat see http://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/content.asp?page=/publications/stats/unmet/index.htm for some numbers – the school output each year is slightly growing; I would guess the number of mature applicants (first time at uni) is reducing because so many more people get there straight away compared with the 1980s; the demand growth potential is second degrees whether Bachelor, VE, or postgraduate.